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May 18, 2010

Artist Sherri Shaver, right, turns over her two clocks to Terry Leopold;Dragonfly design at right is called Time is flying

Racine's summer-long Happy Hour began Tuesday morning, as artists from all over the city brought their clock creations Downtown, in preparation for the Downtown Racine Corporation's Hour Town public art display.

By noon more than 20 of the large clocks were on hand, and the clock was ticking: the deadline is 5 p.m. today. The 60 clocks will be displayed Saturday night on the lawn of "Club Wingspread" at a cocktail party for artists and sponsors. Then they will be distributed Downtown for public display beginning Monday.

Puns were much in evidence among the early arrivals. Plaques with names such as Time is flying, Sands of time, It's always time for tea, Big Time, Timepieces, Time flies and Time to sow were affixed to each clock's base. We'll leave it up to you to guess which name fit which clock: for example, one of a large fish trying to select his lunch or one with farm equipment marking the hours.

Terry Leopold, DRC’s special events coordinator, checked in the clocks as they arrived, listened appreciatively to artists' explanations of their designs, and noted that Racine's public art project -- now in its ninth year -- has gone on longer than any other city's.

Time flies when you're having fun, eh?

Richard Harris and Craig Aude mount Time to Sow on its base

Here's a closeup of Time to Sow, by Jayne and Grace Siler

Natasha Miller brings in Marilyn, by her son Mike Miller, 16, of St. Cat's

44 comments:

I don't know who Mr. Angry is--his true identity is a mystery. One thing I do know, though, is that the play whose name inspired Hour Town (Thornton Wilder's "Our Town") reduced my late Mom to tears when her uncle took her to see it. Whoever came up with the pun on "Our Town" had never read the play nor attended a performance. Don't take my word for it--get the script and read it. "Our Town" has nothing to do with recreation and family fun. Indeed, it's one of the most morbid works in the history of our literature. (The author had a pessimistic mentality. If you don't believe me, read another of his warped creations, "The Bridge at San Luis Rey.")

My Mom passed away years ago. Still, what I said about Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" still stands. Read the ghastly play if you don't believe me. As for the talented people in this community, I wish them well. In fact, I wish them well out of this corrupt company town--may they relocate to better places where they'll be appreciated and won't have to dance to a certain corporate crime family's infantile tune.

No way! Besides, since there isn't anything good about Racine, the folks you mentioned can't do too much damage. (If this town ever acquires any positive features which they can wreck, I'll start worrying about the "right wing nuts" and the "left wing looneys" whom you despise.)

Who's Mr. Angry? I'm just a realist who knows the truth about Rat-Scene, aka The Rodent City, alias the Mickey Mouse Company Town from Hell. Totally unjustifiable community art projects are exactly what I'd expect from the rulers of a Rust Belt burg which leads the USA in minority infant mortality.

Back in the late sixties, there was an underground newspaper in Detroit called "The Watch-Witch." Every issue featured the following dialogue: "Watch-Witch, what time is it?" "Thirteen o'clock and all is hell!"

The only reason the arty-tarty nonsense is in its ninth year is the cash-cum-clout of a callous corporate crime family which funds follies while neglecting necessities. The mere thought of the wealth and effort lavished on bedizened clocks while time runs out for minority infants makes me ashamed of Racine and its corrupt-to-the-core oligarchy.

He who laughs last, laughs best. If I were you, I'd save the crowing for a performance of "Peter Pan." Come to think of it, although "I've Got to Crow" was cute when sung by Mary Martin, it's not so entertaining coming from big-buck business bullies. For your own sake and that of your class, please be less arrogant and callous. Hardhearted and high handed misconduct by the elite helped spark a conflagration known today as the French Revolution. Anyone who thinks that the Yankee oligarchy is exempt from the laws of history is living in La-La Land. When the coming People's Government seizes your assets, don't say that you weren't warned.

As a Christian, I don't want to behold you creeping on bended knees and imploring your erstwhile victims' pardon before you're dragged off to prison or worse. As any historian will inform you, revolutionaries are very creative when it comes to disciplining former oligarchs and their porcine epigones. (Even a reactionary such as Prince Metternich knew this and acted accordingly. Because he was prudent, Metternich was permitted to resign from office unharmed by the revolutionaries. Later on, following his exile from Austria in 1848, the sly old fellow was allowed to return to Vienna and live out his remaining years in his lovely Italianate villa. Verbum sapientibus...)

Unfortunately, Metternich's fellow-reactionaries weren't as smart as he was. As a result of their bumptious behavior, one of them (La Tour) was hanged from a lamp post while another (Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky) saw his mansion looted and burned to the ground. Please learn from history and refrain from abusing the less-fortunate. The life and loot you save could be your own!

Meanwhile, getting back to Hour Town, there's something obscene about unnecessary community art projects in a poverty-ridden municipality whose leaders can't--or won't--do anything about the highest minority infant mortality rate in the nation. Although art is fine in its proper place, the place ISN'T Racine.

Only the excessive influence of a kleptoplutocratic clan keeps the community art tradition alive and sick in Rat-Scene. To cultural anthropologists and other experts who know what they're observing when they visit this sorry city, our obsession with fiber glass beasties, birdbaths, lighthouses, clocks and other folderol is a farce.

Anyone who wants to see the Marie Antoinette Fan Club in full, foul session should tour a certain museum-cum-tax-shelter. The ever-so-clever roach dioramas there should tell perceptive observers that the reek of corruption and moral decay will fill the atmosphere "tres vite." (Right before the French Revolution erupted in 1789, Marie Antoinette and her epicene clique just had to play with stuffed mice clad in silk and gilded beetles. In general, whenever art forms promoted by the elite are so bizarre that they make heterosexual men's skin creep, the fall of the current ruling class is imminent.)

Around 1910, the same fad for decorated insects (gem-studded Goliath beetles worn as living jewelry) resurfaced. This time around, the culprits were the French bourgeoisie and its favorite "Belle Epoque" entertainers. Pretty soon, the guns of August 1914--which ushered in World War I--put an end to the nonsense. When the smoke cleared, the French upper-middle class found itself minus much of its pre-war moolah and might.

A glance at the contents of a certain highly-touted local museum should suffice to show anyone that "something wicked this way comes" while the status quo is on its way to history's landfill. (Outre art based on gimmicks and designed to amuse an easily-bored elite is a sure sign of decadence.)

Going by the outrageous so-called art I've encountered here, I'd say that the treasure tyrants and their Ivy League salary serfs have at most another decade in which to decay before a common man's government ends their reign of error.

When historians finally write the autopsy report on Racine, they'll list the elite's snobbish, escapist obsession with aesthetics among the causes of death. Hardhearted concentration on eye candy ("arty-stare-osis") is killing the community by inches.

Enjoy your "great" life while the government and society still tolerate your modus vivendi. Believe me, once a common man's regime assumes command, your class and all for which it stands could be in serious trouble.

He who laughs last, laughs best. Having spent fifty years researching revolutions and the conditions which spawn them, I can confidently inform you that our sad land is on the verge of a socio-economic upheaval which will make the Civil War and Reconstruction resemble the sack race at a church picnic. In a sick sense, "Hour Town" is an appropriate community art project for a corrupt bastion of big business. Sooner than you may care to think, history's clock will strike low twelve for corporate capitalism.